Chrome gears up for Lego Movie with in-browser brick building

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In just over a week The Lego Movie hits theaters around the world. To celebrate, Google has teamed up with Lego to re-launch a new-and-improved version of their browser-based brick building diversion.

The experiment itself is an old one, launched back in the summer of 2012 by an team of Australian Googlers and Lego staffers. Build With Chrome is simple enough to figure out: click to choose from an assortment of standard Lego bricks in various colors and click again to snap them onto the base plate.

You can rotate the view and zoom to ensure proper placement. Dropped something in the wrong spot? A right click on the offending brick removes it. No need to hunt for your brick separator or bite them off with your teeth.

Want to recreate a landmark from your home town and place it on the map? Stake your claim and start building. Google can even use Chrome’s geolocation abilities to figure out where you are — just in case you’re having trouble doing it on your own.

If you need a bit of practice before you get started on your masterpiece, the Build Academy can help. Vitruvius (voiced by Morgan Freeman in the movie) will guide you through a series of challenges to improve your skills.

Though it’s been around for two years, it’s still not a perfect experience. In Chrome on my Lenovo desktop, for example, the screen went completely red when zooming in on other users’ builds.

And don’t get any ideas about using another browser to play with Google’s virtual Lego bricks. Visit the page with Internet Explorer, and you’ll be told that you need to switch to Chrome. With Firefox? You’ll be lucky if more than 10% of the landing page renders.

This is nothing new for Google, of course. Many of the experiments they build to show off the power of the web either 1) only work properly in Chrome or 2) shut out other browsers to get users to install Chrome even though it would’ve worked OK anyway.

“Open” issues aside, this is a fun, creative little timewaster that you can check out in Chrome on your desktop, laptop, or Android device… so get building!